Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday warned about closer ties between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP), saying the two parties were conspiring to sign three agreements via three communication platforms within three years.
Emphasizing that it was a serious matter, Lu said Beijing had changed its tactic from military intimidation to soft and smart power.
“[Beijing] has realized that war will invite international sanctions and be detrimental to its rise in power,” she said. “So it has begun to engage in a plot for peaceful unification.”
With China's “Anti-Secession” Law in place, Lu said the KMT administration and CCP regime were colluding to implement the “3-3-3” plan.
Lu said the two parties planned to sign an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA), build a military confidence-building mechanism and ink a peace treaty before 2011 using as their communication platforms the KMT-CCP forum, the cross-strait forum, and the Straits Exchange Foundation and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait.
Since taking office in May last year, Ma has redefined his “three noes” pledge, Lu said.
No discussion of unification with Beijing during his presidency has become “no exclusion of unification with Beijing,” Lu said, while no pursuit or support of de jure Taiwanese independence has become “no to Taiwanese independence.”
Commenting on the recent visits to China by former DPP legislator Hsu Jung-shu (許榮淑) and former Council of Agriculture minister Fan Chen-tsung (范振宗), Lu said although she thought it was inappropriate to do so, she respected the party's decision to punish them.
Defying a DPP ban, Hsu and Fan participated in the KMT-CCP forum on July 11 at the invitation of the CCP. The DPP Central Standing Committee has passed a proposal to expel Hsu and Fan for attending the forum. The approved motion has been sent to the party's Central Review Committee for a final ruling today, with Fan and Hsu invited to defend themselves.
Lu, who met Hsu on Tuesday, said Hsu thought the party's ban on its members visiting China was not applicable to her because she does not hold any party position.
Besides, the meeting she attended in China was “not that big a deal,” Lu quoted Hsu as saying.
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
The Chinese military has boosted its capability to fight at a high tempo using the element of surprise and new technology, the Ministry of National Defense said in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) published on Monday last week. The ministry highlighted Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) developments showing significant changes in Beijing’s strategy for war on Taiwan. The PLA has made significant headway in building capabilities for all-weather, multi-domain intelligence, surveillance, operational control and a joint air-sea blockade against Taiwan’s lines of communication, it said. The PLA has also improved its capabilities in direct amphibious assault operations aimed at seizing strategically important beaches,
New Taipei City prosecutors have indicted a cram school teacher in Sinjhuang District (新莊) for allegedly soliciting sexual acts from female students under the age of 18 three times in exchange for cash payments. The man, surnamed Su (蘇), committed two offenses in 2023 and one last year, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. The office in recent days indicted Su for contraventions of the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act (兒童及少年性剝削防制條例), which prohibits "engaging in sexual intercourse or lewd acts with a minor over the age of 16, but under the age of 18 in exchange for
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty